“Girl turns into fish, news at eight?” Fred suggested. “Come on, Mom. You weren’t a little freaked out?”

“I thought you were a miracle,” she replied, and the simple dignity in her voice wiped the smirk off Fred’s face. “I still do.” She turned to Sam. “Thank goodness I had a natural childbirth right here in this house! Think of the mess if all kinds of Western medicine had descended on poor Fred!” She turned back to her daughter. “I was scared to even bring you in for your vaccinations. And I quit once we realized you couldn’t ever get sick.”

“Well.” Fred coughed. “That’s—ah. That’s nice, Mom. A miracle. That’s—miraculous. So that’s why you called me over? To tell me stuff I already knew?”

“We didn’t know you knew,” Sam pointed out. “And as your mother said, filling out all the paperwork, and all the meetings, got us thinking.”

“Why are you adopting?”

Her parents gave her puzzled ‘why not?’ looks.

Fred tried to explain. “Most people your age would be thrilled to have the place to themselves.”

“Well, I don’t know if thrilled is exactly the—”

“Sam, you don’t even have to work—you still get checks from your dad’s invention, right?”

“Right.” Sam’s father had thought up edible underwear. The family got a piece of every fruit panty or chocolate G-string ever sold. “But we have all this space—” He gestured vaguely to the kitchen. “And it’s such a nice location.”

Real nice. Right on the ocean—Fred knew that the four bedroom, three bathroom “shack” on the bay would sell for a cool two-point-two if her parents ever wanted to move. But her “earth mother” mother took to Sam’s money like a—well, like a fish to water. And they would never sell.

And even with all the donations to the Audubon Society and the YMCA and the Cape Cod Literary Council and the Hospice of Cape Cod and the Hyannis Public Library, there was still plenty left every year. Every month.

“And you’ve got your own life now,” Sam still droned. “We hardly ever see you.”

“Work. Keeps me busy,” she mumbled.

“Honey, it wasn’t a reprimand!”

“Sounded like one.”

“You’re a grown woman, you have your own life.”

Ha.

“And we have ours and we’re just not—we’re not ready for it just to be the two of us yet.” Her mother reached out and Sam, as he always did, took her hand. “It just feels wrong.”

Ah, her life. Her wonderful life. She’d last been on a real date six years ago, her boss kept trying to fix her up, the fish at work were deep in rebellion mode, and whatever way you looked at it she was a freak.

Freak. Abnormality. Anomaly. Glitch, Genetic hiccup.

And this was why her folks wanted another kid? Because they thought they did such a hot job on the first one?

Well, maybe it’d be fun to raise one that didn’t grow a tail and pick fights with tuna.

“Okay, well, good luck and all.” Fred paused, waiting for a response. When none was forthcoming, she continued. “If you need a reference from, uh, someone you raised, I can write a letter. Or whatever.”